A team player rides into the sunset
I’ve never once felt sorry for a politician, particularly those at the top end of the food chain. The men and women of the U.S. Senate and House? They do just fine, thank you. The commute from Washington, D.C., to their home bases, especially in the West, especially around campaign time, isn’t a lot of fun. But it’s all relative, right?
After all, this is Washington, center of the political universe. In the Land of the Black SUV, people stop using your first name. It’s always, “Good morning, Senator!” or “Enjoying your salad, Congresswoman?” Sure, some of the work is hard and/or stultifying dull, but the perks are many. Compared to intubating COVID-19 patients or mining uranium or serving a warrant on the wrong side of town, it’s a fairly cushy gig.
For some in Washington, the biggest daily chore is to make certain your press office is wallpapering the media back home with a single message: The world might be going to hell, but your representative is battling hard in the Beltway on behalf of the good people back home.
Again, all things considered, a very good job. There has to be a reason so many try so hard to get it.
But today, I really do feel bad for the ultimate politician: Tom Udall, New Mexico’s outgoing senior senator.
He should’ve been the nation’s next Interior Department secretary.
Please understand, Udall doesn’t need my sympathy nor anyone else’s. He’s had a run to envy: state attorney general, U.S. congressman, 12 years in the Senate. If two decades in D.C. have done damage to him, you’d never know it. Udall is 72, looks 42 and probably can fit into a pair of size-32s. And while you never really get credit for this in American politics — this nation elected Donald Trump, after all — he is genuinely one of the nicest people around.
Besides, he looks good on a horse. To be the secretary of Interior, it’s a must; the photo op that matters.
The current head of the department, David Bernhardt, looks good in a black Chevy Tahoe.
What Udall wanted for Christmas — and really, it was obvious — was the Interior job. I can’t say for certain that he woke up as a kid in Tucson, Ariz., and said to himself, “I’m gonna follow in my dad’s footsteps and run the Interior Department someday,” but almost everything in his adult life
seemed to point in that direction. His entire career in public service, particularly as it applied to the environment and the nation’s public lands, had to be leading somewhere.
And now, in the gloaming of his political career, came the perfect opportunity.
With Joe Biden headed to the White House, plus political connections from here to Delaware, everything was in place. You had to think this was not merely Udall’s dream job, but the place he was meant to be.
But in Washington, where dreams sometimes collide, Udall’s fell to pieces.
Straight out of Albuquerque came a missile named Deb Haaland, a fellow New Mexican whose two-year career in Congress — two years! — somehow set her up to get the offer from Biden. This isn’t a knock on Haaland, who has policy and personal bonafides when it comes to public lands. But her Native background, and the opportunity to make history as the first Indigenous member on the Cabinet, had to be a key factor, if not the key factor, in Biden’s decision.
That’s great for her and Native people in this country — such an appointment is long overdue.
But if you’re Tom Udall, dutifully carrying the environmental ball for decades, always willing to shout at the rain as Republicans took control of the Senate and turned public lands into a potential gas station, this one has to hurt.
You’d never know it, however, from the public statement the senator issued not long after the Haaland announcement.
“Together, we can take on the climate and nature crises, jumpstart our economy through renewable energy and land restoration, and pursue greater environmental justice,” Udall said. “I will do everything I can to support Deb Haaland and the Biden-Harris administration in the years to come to ensure that the Department of Interior delivers progress for tribes, the West, and the entire nation.”
Whether the words were heartfelt, only Udall really knows. But they call to mind a different time in politics, when personal ambition took a backseat to civility and reality. This is Deb Haaland’s time, and Tom Udall — a liberal before Democrats cooked up the term progressive to make themselves look tough — stepped aside in the way you’d expect.
Figuratively, at least, he tipped his hat and moved on.
Though Udall is retiring from the Senate, it’s still too early to say he’s riding into the sunset. But he’s on a horse, for sure.
Just not the one he wanted.
Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.